Adam Crapser, Korean Adoptee to be Deported

Adam Crapser was brought to the United States when he was 3, to start a new life — new parents, new culture, new country.

But his adoptive parents didn’t complete his citizenship papers. Then they abandoned him to the foster care system.

And now, as a 41-year-old father of four, he’s being deported. Despite his appeals for help, he has been ordered to be sent back to South Korea, a country The Associated Press describes as “completely alien to him.”

If we believe adoptees to be genuine members of American families, they do not deserve deportation. If we don’t believe they are genuine family members, then adoption loses its meaning and integrity. What’s more, the U.S. loses its honor and breaks its promise to these legal immigrants adopted by U.S. citizens. A bill, the Adoptee Citizenship Act, is designed to provide retroactive citizenship to international adoptees, but it has made slow progress through Congress. Recently, more sponsors have signed on, but this session of Congress will soon end. Thousands of international adoptees and their families are affected, and our current anti-immigrant culture doesn’t bode well for the bill’s passage. And that is shameful.

If you have time today, please send an email to the White House or your Congress person to not allow for the deportation of Adam Crapser. His four children need him, and the 35,000 international adoptees without citizenship need for him to stay. We need him as a champion to blaze the trail for new legislation that automatically grants US citizenship to all international adoptees, adopted before 2000.